


Lapis Lazuli

by brevitas



Series: Ashes to Ashes [5]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Dragon AU, Fantasy AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-12-13 08:38:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brevitas/pseuds/brevitas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras discovers the full effect of what Grantaire has done; no matter what the revolutionary wishes he is now Grantaire's Rider and from that there is no coming back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lapis Lazuli

It takes Enjolras half an hour to walk home after Grantaire leaves; he feels drunk from adrenaline and blood loss and halfway there clumsily peels his shirt off to hold to the wound. He’s at the foot of his stairs, trying to decide whether it's plausible in any fashion to climb them, when Combeferre asks shrilly behind him, “Jesus, Enjolras, what happened?”

His best friend hurries to his side and wraps an arm around his waist, and Enjolras leans into him with a relieved chuckle. “Can you help me get inside?” He asks instead, and Combeferre, desperate to know what did this to him, begrudgingly agrees. Enjolras’ hands aren't working well enough for him to manage the lock so Combeferre takes the key and does it himself, dragging Enjolras to the couch. The blonde sits down heavily, rearranging the soaked cloth at his neck.

Once Combeferre locks the door he comes and sits on the coffee table in front of him, his eyes intense behind his glasses. “Tell me what happened,” he says.

Enjolras clears his throat, winces at the fresh pain, and tips his head back a few inches. He considers lying to Combeferre but he’s too wiped out to come up with an acceptable one, and finally he says to the ceiling, “Grantaire bit me.”

Combeferre is silent for so long that eventually Enjolras cranes his head to look at him and finds the scholar frowning, his hands pinched between his knees. Enjolras is familiar with this expression and can see the anger in the way Combeferre’s shoulders are hunched forward and his fingers fisted in his jeans and in an attempt to defuse him says lamely, “I’m sure it’s not as bad as it looks.”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre says, and Enjolras knows this tone too; he’s so mad that his voice is as flat as a pond in the winter. “Your shirt is soaked through. I’m quite certain it’s actually much worse than it looks.”

Enjolras purses his mouth and says, “I don’t think he meant it to be this bad.” He isn't sure how this changes whatever it is that’s between them but this at least Enjolras believes; Grantaire had seemed ashamed by the power in his jaws, and looked guilty when he’d fled.

Combeferre ignores him. “I’m going to go get Joly,” he says, “And then you’re going to tell me what Grantaire is.” He stands and disappears out the front door. In his absence Enjolras slouches lower with a long sigh.

“Fuck,” he says and knows in his bones Combeferre will not let this lie until he learns Grantaire's secret.

Across town Grantaire yanks his door open so forcefully that the doorknob punctures the plaster behind it. He stares at the hole for all of about two seconds, looking up and snarling at the woman who pokes her head out of her room in concern, and then stalks inside. The door slams just as hard behind him.

He throws himself down on the couch and reaches blindly for the alcohol he keeps right next to it, coming up with a half empty vodka bottle. It'll do.

While he spends the night drinking himself into a stupor Enjolras is getting stitches and trying to dissuade his friends from overreacting. By the time Joly had properly bandaged him everyone had been called; the Amis crowded his living room, sitting on every surface available like a flock of strange birds. Each refused to leave until they were told what had happened; so far Combeferre had kept his silence, gritting his teeth every time someone asked.

Enjolras could only successfully sidestep it for so long. He eventually relents and tells them someone had tried to mug him and when he'd squirmed the man's knife had cut his throat. Thankfully only Joly and Combeferre have seen the wound in any great detail (with their knowledge, they see this for the lie it is). He persuades everyone to go home and assures them he'll be at the next meeting, on a Tuesday this time.

Joly gives him a strange look when he passes but doesn't linger, and when Enjolras finally closes his door it is only his closest friends left. Courfeyrac and Combeferre watch him, one seated on the couch, the other leaning against the kitchen table.

"What really happened?" Courfeyrac asks, and Enjolras is powerless to lie to them.

When he first says dragon he can see the disbelief in their expressions. He does not judge them for it; he had scarcely believed it himself and considering that the symbol they've been chasing for generations is sitting in front of them wrapped in the facade of a drunk fighter, their doubt is understandable.

Courfeyrac asks jokingly, "Did that mugger happen to smack ya in the back of the head too?" and Enjolras frowns.

"I'm serious," he says. "Grantaire is a dragon. He's Alsius, in fact."

While Combeferre and Courfeyrac argue that there is no possible way Grantaire can be Alsius, who they've painted on all their signs with his ugly scars and crippled wings, Grantaire shoves his face into a pillow in his apartment and tries not to scream.

He didn't mean for this to happen. He's smart enough to not mark humans; he knows what that means, what that entails, and yet when he'd been around Enjolras it had been all he could think about. Every time Enjolras had looked sidelong at him, with that small concerned frown he favored, Grantaire had to clench his jaw and dig his fingers into his knees. It was the only way to focus and he adopted a mantra, a repeated prayer of Just until this meeting is over.

But Enjolras had made the mistake of grabbing him while Grantaire had been trying to leave and the physical contact was what had destroyed his last defenses. When he'd first turned to face the blonde he had just been planning to say, "I have to go," but Enjolras' pulse had been jumping under the shadow of his chin and Grantaire simply couldn't help it.

His body hums with the new conquest and Grantaire struggles to ignore it but it's hard; the pocket of frustration in his stomach does not belong to him, but to Enjolras, and the pain throbbing at his throat is the revolutionary's as well.

"Fuck me," Grantaire groans into his pillow. "Fuck me and fuck Riders and fuck everything."

Enjolras, in the middle of telling Combeferre, "Of _course_ he has scales," has a strange sense of being watched. He glances subtly at his windows, unsure why he feels like this, and upon seeing no one crouched outside rubs at the taped edge of his bandage.

He's drawn back into the conversation when Courfeyrac asks, "Is that why he was acting so weird?" Enjolras jumps on the possibility of convincing one of them and tries not to think about the alien guilt poisoning his stomach (it doesn't feel quite right, like it belongs to someone else, but Enjolras prides himself on being logical and the theory doesn't hold up).

Grantaire can feel Enjolras' curiosity, knows he's noticed that something has changed. He's pretty drunk by now but he can control this link if he just focuses; he squeezes his eyes shut and struggles to turn it off. He knows he's succeeded when Enjolras' curiosity fades but for Grantaire there is no relief; he drinks more while Enjolras proves to Courfeyrac and Combeferre that dragons are real, and their favorite drunk is one of them.

At some point Combeferre and Courfeyrac go home, and Grantaire finally passes out. When he wakes he feels a combination of a hangover and a neck wound and the familiarity is there and he hates it; no matter how he tries to look at this, Enjolras is his Rider and properly marked as he is, they're connected.

Grantaire can shield Enjolras but he can't shield himself, and while he showers he feels Enjolras poke at the edges of the wound, no doubt mystified as to why it's healing so quickly. Grantaire debates saying something about how the ownership marks have a tendency to heal fast but decides not to; he isn't quite sure he's ready to show Enjolras that they can hear one another now, no matter how far apart they might get.

He drinks more while Enjolras eats breakfast, and takes to an old coping method he'd favored once or twice before; he gets so drunk he can't walk right, so drunk that not even his canvases look enticing to him. When he passes out at noon he makes a mistake he hadn't noticed in his drunken stupor; that at the same time he was losing consciousness, Enjolras was dozing off.

This too Grantaire could have avoided if he'd been the right state of mind to do so, but he wasn't; his dreams are not his and he knows that within a single look around. The room he's in is patterned with ugly floral wallpaper that was the fad decades ago, and is sporting only one piece of furniture; a sea-green loveseat that plays off the colors in the walls.

"Christ," he grumbles, sitting down and setting his head in his hands. There's nothing to do about it now; he's not the one controlling the dream and unless Enjolras wishes it, he's staying here until he wakes up.

Enjolras wanders in from the adjacent door and blinks upon seeing Grantaire, looks around the room with a slight frown. "What is this?" He asks – even he knows that something is different about this scene, that it feels too real to be a half-forgotten dream.

"We're sharing a dream," Grantaire tells his palms. "I'm sorry, I would've shielded you but I'm a bit drunk and didn't realize you were getting ready to take a nap."

Enjolras regards him suspiciously, and remains standing rather than take the seat to his left. "What do you mean, sharing a dream?" He asks.

"I'm sorry," Grantaire says again, pushing his heels into his eyes until he sees starbursts. "I really am."

"What are you sorry about?" Enjolras snaps, angry now, and Grantaire feels it like a whip. He rubs a lock of hair stiffened with paint.

"When I marked you, I made you my Rider." He pronounces it like a title, though of honor or disgrace Enjolras can't tell. "We're connected now. I can shield you from it," he hurries to say, and looks up then. "It won't change anything about you, and you can ignore it. We can go on being friends, easy as that."

Enjolras' frown deepens. "Friends that share dreams?" He asks disbelievingly.

"Yeah." Grantaire sighs. "I'm really sorry. I'm usually a lot better at this but, uh, well, it's been a while. I'm a little rusty." He shrugs. "I'll get good after this, and you won't notice anything out of place; it'll just be just like nothing happened. It'll be fine."

Enjolras thinks he's trying to convince himself of that too, and reluctantly takes the seat next to him. "What did happen?" He asks, looking at him. "Something to do with dragons, I'm assuming?"

Grantaire folds his arms across his chest and nods. "When we joined humankind we had to find a way to coexist with you; a lot of you feared us, for both our size and power. You considered us monsters, uncontrollable if we lost our tempers and honestly, you were right.

"Some of my ancestors decided that a sacrifice had to be made in order to prove our willingness to cooperate, and we devised this, well, we call it a connection, and it's forged with a single human. This relationship binds us to them until the end of their life. They were our Riders and like the name suggests, would ride us into battle; our link made us better fighters."

"What exactly does this link entail?" Enjolras asks after Grantaire has fallen silent for well over a minute.

Grantaire wishes this was his dream, if only so he could conjure up a cigarette. He satisfies himself with rubbing the trail of scales along the back of his arm, from his elbow to his bicep. "This for one thing," he says, with a gesture around the room. "We can feel one another at all times too; you may have noticed that yesterday, but it won't happen again." He makes no comment toward the fact that he can shield Enjolras but not himself; he doesn't find it necessary to tell the blonde that for Grantaire there is no escape.

"The only thing I won't be able to shield you from is pain, so I'll do my damnedest not to get hurt." He draws a circle on his elbow, thinking. "Theoretically we can share thoughts too but we don't need to."

He wonders how badly it will hurt when Enjolras takes a different lover. He's never had a Rider do that to him but he's heard of the stories; even if the dragon feels nothing extraordinary toward his Rider their bond is too close to allow room for a third party. Many times the dragons got sick, so emotionally wounded they were, and Grantaire had even heard of one or two of them dying. From heartache, the romantics had said. Grantaire personally believed they died from loneliness instead.

Enjolras nods then says, "This sounds manageable." He's trying to be chipper – Grantaire can see it in the tightness of his smile. "We'll just have to be more careful."

Grantaire offers a hum in response, and doesn't look up. More careful. Christ, he never should have joined the revolutionaries.

"Oh and something happened with Combeferre and Courfeyrac," he begins slowly, almost warily. Grantaire is rudely reminded that a part of Enjolras is afraid of him now; he's seen the power he holds even folded up in this human body, and now intimately knows him as beast rather than man. "They wondered about the bite and really I-"

"It's fine." Grantaire stands, itching to get out of this dream. "They were bound to find out eventually."

Enjolras nods and watches him pace, the size of the room only allowing for a short circle. Grantaire finally turns to him and says sharply, "Can you wake up now?" and Enjolras doesn't know how but he does. Within a blink he's looking up at his ceiling, a blanket pulled haphazardly over him, the wound at his neck, which had been forgotten during sleep, aching fiercely.

Grantaire wakes at his apartment slowly. He keeps his eyes closed and feels Enjolras' eagerness to learn more about this connection; no doubt he's already scouring all those books he keeps on dragons, searching in the index for a reference to Riders.

Grantaire is glad the books are so vague. He's confident there will be no mentions of 'soulmates' and for this at least he is grateful.

**Author's Note:**

> requested by anonymous, ohnoitsadalek, anonymous and ramblingmaenad! thanks for the requests you cuties :)
> 
> title is a stone I'm assuming mostly everybody is familiar with; the lapis lazuli is a gorgeous stone and for generations has meant truth. I thought it was fitting for this chapter
> 
> let me know if anyone has any questions, I know I tackled a pretty large change in this chapter!
> 
> tumblr is idfaciendumest, feel free to follow or ask me shit or request things or whatever ;)


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